Assassin bit of a killjoy

The first brain-tweaking revelation in Assassin's Creed comes literally right at the beginning, so let's get it out in the open, spoiler alerts be damned: This is a game about a medieval hitman, set in the ancient Holy Land during the Third Crusade... and it takes place in the year 2012.

But if you've been following this three-years-in-the-making Ubisoft Montreal epic -- and it seems like everyone and their pet hunting falcon has been -- you probably already suspected as much. Assassin's Creed is a simulation within a simulation, a video game about a guy being forced to play a video game inside his own brain. Whoa.